1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the new preparation of ditertiarybutyltelluride.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition film growth of Mercury-Cadmium-Telluride (Hg.sub.1-x Cd.sub.x Te) is adversely affected by the high growth temperatures of 400.degree. C. to 425.degree. C. which are needed to crack diethyltelluride. At these temperatures, problems include mercury evaporation from the film and diffusion across the film-substrate interface.
Ditertiarybutyltelluride has been used to deposit films of HgTe and CdTe at temperatures as low as 250.degree. C. with excellent results (W. E. Hoke and P. J. Lemonias, "Low-temperature metalorganic growth of CdTe and HgTe films using ditertiarybutyltelluride", Applied Physics Letter, vol. 48, no. 24 (Jun. 16, 1986), pp. 1669-1671). However, ditertiarybutyltelluride is in short supply since the presently used synthesis is a low yield process.
The existing process for preparing ditertiarybutyltelluride involves the reaction to tellurium tetrachloride with 2 equivalents of tertiarybutylmagnesium chloride and results in yields of less than 20% (C. H. W. Jones and R. D. Sharma, "THE PREPARATION OF DI-t-BUTYL DITELLURIDE AND DI-t-BUTYL TELLURIDE AND THE .sup.125 Te NMR AND MOSSBAUER SPECTRA OF SOME DIALKYL TELLURIDES AND DITELLURIDES", Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, vol. 255, (1983) pp. 61-70).